And You Bring Me Home
by merrygloom
Summary: Seven ways Nana and Hachi might find each other again. Hachi & Nana and Hachi/Nana.


i.

Her heels click as she walks the well traveled path up the seven flights of stairs to Apartment 707. She flicks through the mail as she goes, but there's nothing of note. Hachi's been checking the mail to 707 on a near daily basis, just in case, since she'd gotten that Christmas Miracle. She'll have to have Miu come by and check the mail for her while she's gone, to be on the safe side.

Hachi turns the corner and starts up the fifth flight of stairs, nodding in greeting to an old neighbor.

She's leaving Japan for the first time in her life tomorrow. She'll board a plane to England and she'll stay a few days in a hotel before she visits that cafe... It'll be the first time she's slept under a roof that Nana won't know where to find her in half a decade.

She's scared.

As she steps out onto the first floor, she pulls out her key from her pocket. Even after all these years, even knowing she'll be on her way to where Nana is tomorrow, her heart still clenches in hope.

Even then, she doesn't expect it when the door handle turns easy in her hand when she turns it before unlocking the door.

Her heart pounds like it has every time before, dreaming, wishing, hoping… Its never been different anytime before, but this time, maybe…

Hachi opens the door, heart clawing at her throat.

At the table, a woman. Long blonde hair. The room smells like Seven Stars brand cigarettes.

Nana.

The woman looks up. It is her. Her face blurs, tears warping the face she's been longing to see for so long.

Hachi remembers a thousand times that she'd imagined this scenario.

"Welcome home."

Nana blinks at her from the table. She looks like a startled animal.

"I'm home."

ii.

Hachi remembers when Asano had found her in the crowds of Tokyo, a chance in a million.

She remembers talking to Ren in a late-night phone call, how he'd found Nana's face in two different crowds in a concert.

It is the smell that has Hachi turning – the smell of Seven Stars and that cologne that had been Ren's first but would always, always be Nana's in Hachi's heart.

She sees the blonde hair, just like in the photograph that burns hot in her purse.

She'd been waiting and looking for Nana in all the places that they'd been together first. Hachi had never imagined finding in a crowd, in a place she'd never been in before.

Hachi calls out the name she's never stopped calling for.

"Nana."

Nana turns to her.

iii.

In just a few moments she'll be in the place where Nana had been in the photograph.

Hachi looks out the sea, sea salt burning her lungs.

'Is this the sea that Nana wanted to see, that time,' Hachi wonders. 'Has Nana stood, looking out on the sea from where I am now?'

She is thousands of miles from home but when she looks out at the sea, it feels like it could be the same ocean she just left in Japan.

The ocean laps at her boots and she breathes in the sea, air Nana has been breathing miles and miles from where Hachi had been waiting.

"How like my dog, to hunt me down from oceans away."

Hachi jumps, whirling to look behind her.

Her hair is long, moving with the sea breeze. Nana's eyes turn up kindly, but Hachi recognizes the pain she'd never acknowledged before in Nana's dark eyes.

"I'm sorry I'm late," Hachi says softly, unbelieving, hands reaching. Nana hesitates before extending her hand to Hachi.

Hachi closes the gap, takes her hand.

Nana's hand is still warm, all these years later, even by the cold sea.

iv.

Hachi enters the cafe, slipping into a seat in the back of the room. She doesn't know when the musical entertainment for the night will begin, if it'll be Nana.

She orders a coffee and waits, pressing a napkin to her lips.

Her heart feels like it'll burst from her mouth if she isn't careful.

Before she's even in the room, on the stage, Hachi feels her. She watches her enter, unfamiliar blonde hair. She takes the stage like she was born to it.

Then, the voice. The voice Hachi has been longing to hear.

It's a different song, but Hachi remembers – she'd never forgotten, never. The magic Nana had once created, standing on their table and singing in the light of the moon.

The voices of everyone else in that room fades away and its like Hachi is the only one in the audience once more, Nana's voice washing over her.

The magic is still there, like it never even left.

v.

It is snowing quite early for autumn when Hachi steps onto the bullet train. Satsuki has spent the past month with her parents in her hometown and Hachi will be seeing her for the first time since she'd been in England.

She hadn't been able to find Nana in England and she'd been too anxious to keep staying in place Nana might not even be so she'd come back home.

She hadn't given up, but she was willing to cut her loses on that trip and return home and continue waiting as she had been for years, safely in a place Nana would know she could find her.

The train starts moving and she sighs – she should sit. There are plenty of empty seats and Hachi heads to one near the middle when she sees long blonde hair.

Her first thought is those photographs but she shakes the thought away. Just a foreigner. She couldn't keep jumping in hope at every reminder of Nana; everything reminded her of Nana.

Then the stranger lights up a cigarette and before Hachi can stop herself she is walking forward. Her head is bent low and her hair covers her face. Hachi leans in close, trying to see her face but leans too far and she tumbles onto the stranger's lap.

"Are you alright?" a familiar voice asks and Hachi turns.

Nana's concerned face melts into stunned recognition.

"Is this seat empty?" Hachi blurts, a script they both recognize.

Nana nods faintly and Hachi clambers up, into the seat beside Nana.

She remembers the first time they met, a meeting like fate. This has to be fate too, how it was always meant to be. Nana hadn't said a word about herself that time and Hachi looks at her and knows this time isn't different.

They ride past Hachi's hometown and Hachi doesn't say a word. Her parents will understand.

Hachi talks the whole ride and Nana listens quietly but Hachi has learned to listen to Nana's silence and understands every unspoken word. The snow falls gently outside their window.

vi.

Hachi takes a deep breath before turning and locking Room 707 behind her. No matter how long it has been, she continues to hope.

She refuses to be disappointed each time she enters a room, hoping to find Nana inside.

It is Tanabata and her wishes she'd left on the bamboo tree in Room 707 is just the same as it has been the seven years before.

For Ren and Satsuki's health and happiness and for Nana.

Just Nana.

A half-hour after leaving Room 707, Hachi realizes she had forgotten her purse on the table. She turns back with a sigh, walking back along the river lit by streetlamps and stars. As she approaches the building, her eyes find Room 707's and she stops short.

The lights are on.

Had she forgotten to turn them off?

Hachi runs up the stairs, taking two at a time. How many times has she done this before? The last time it had only been Yasu visiting. Everyone from Blast visits Room 707 from time to time.

Still she never stops hoping, waiting. Always waiting.

Hachi bursts in the door. The lights on but there is no one at the table, nothing but the purse she'd left.

Her eyes water, but she'd expected that. Then she peeks in the bathroom.

Sitting on the side of the bathtub is Nana. She turns and looks at Hachi, like she'd been expecting her.

"I guess you had to get a new bathtub, huh?"

Hachi remembers it well, the last time they were both in this bathroom.

"Nana," her name comes out a sob. She says it more strongly as second time,"Nana."

Hachi runs to her and her momentum knocks them both into the bathtub. "Nana," she cries again. Then she presses her mouth against Nana's.

July 7th, the lovers reunite.

vii.

Her body aches. Its been years, but she hasn't stopped waiting. Both her children have given her grandchildren, but Hachi hasn't given up.

Hachi dusts the warehouse that had been Ren and Nana's now that Nobu has gotten too sick to care for the place himself as the only one living in Blast's hometown. She's never been here with Nana before, but Hachi has insisted on keeping it well maintain. For Nana she said. Her friend's faces got sadder and sadder every time she's said that.

It has been forty years since she first met Nana.

Hachi is sixty now.

Her time by Nana's side had only been a small fraction of her lifetime, but most of her life has been spent like this. Waiting. For Nana.

Hachi pauses and sighs as she clean the bathtub. At the front door, she hears footsteps. She must have lost track of the time. Ren must be here to pick her up and drop her off at Terashima Inn for the night. She isn't quite finished cleaning but perhaps her son will help her finish.

Then there is the sound of a key in a lock and Hachi frowns. Hachi has the only key and it is in her pocket. The only key besides -,

She jumps up and bolts through the bathroom door, as spry as she was when she was twenty years old. The door opens and even if the face has lines she doesn't remember, she knows who it is.

Hachi had been right; Misato so looks like Nana does now, like Misuzu did twenty years ago before she passed last year. It had ached her, to be friends with the sister who looked so like the person she had never stopped waiting for.

Hachi leaves a message for her son that she doesn't need to be picked up that night. She spends the night listening to Nana talk, softly.

"I promised Ren, that when I was old and lost all my pride…," Nana says sadly, wistfully. "That we'd retire and live here together."

That night they sleep in Ren and Nana's old bed, curled together on the same pillow. It has been so long ago since they last did this.

As Nana sleeps, Hachi watches over her sleeping face.

In all her dreams of having Nana beside her once more, she'd imagined the smell of Seven Star cigarettes and Ren's cologne. Yet that smell comes from Hachi herself, from lighting cigarettes just for the familiar scent, from applying Nana's perfume just for the comfort.

Nana smells like Black Stones cigarettes, though, and strangely like the perfume Hachi had worn when she was much younger, in her early twenties.

Hachi shuts her eyes and she can imagine it is forty years earlier, like the first time she'd slept beside Nana.

Like a sweet first love, even in her sixties.


End file.
